An Open Letter to President Joseph Biden

 

Dear President Biden,

        As a concerned citizen I write you about our efforts in the U.S. to aid the people of Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin is not merely an illegal act of aggression, it is a combination of malignant demagoguery with the most venal form of kleptocratic greed. On the one hand Putin sells his murders as being in service of a racially defined "Greater Russia" that is purely fascist in conception. On the other hand his campaign is aimed at putting the wealth and productivity of Ukraine at the disposal of him and his cronies, so that they might buy more mansions and yachts. It has become rare to see acts of such naked evil perpetrated on such a large scale since the end of World War II. 

        Your leadership in this crisis has been commendable. You have taken a strong stand against Putin's villainy, and kept our allies unified in providing material support to Ukraine and imposing punishing sanctions on the Russian economy. But I fear that the greatest tests may lie ahead.

        Though the Ukrainian people and their president have mounted a heroic defense of their homeland, they remain massively outgunned by the Russian military. In Chechnya and Syria Vladimir Putin has shown that there is no bottom to his homicidal depravity. He will continue to escalate the level of murderous destruction leveled against the civilians of Ukraine, including the elderly, children, and infants, until the will of the Ukrainian people is broken or until there are not enough of them left alive to wage a resistance. As Putin does this, his threats to use nuclear weapons will become more brazen and more grotesque.

           We cannot let that happen.  The fall of Ukraine would usher in a newly nihilistic era in world politics. Every bad actor in the globe would feel emboldened to use force in pursuit of pecuniary interests. Nuclear proliferation would spin out of control. The clear lesson of Ukraine would be that a nuclear-armed nation can hold the rest of the world hostage, and so every petty tyrant on earth would demand to have atomic weapons, and the time before one was used would be short.

        There has been much discussion about the ways in which US intervention in Ukraine could inadvertently set off World War III. Such concerns are valid, and in a crisis such as this, caution is always wise. But we must understand one thing: while intervention to assist Ukraine might trigger World War III, the destruction of Ukraine will make World War III an absolute certainty. We must do anything and everything we can to prevent that from happening, up to and including the imposition of a no-fly zone to interdict Vladimir Putin's campaign of murder and terror.

        Thank you for brave leadership in hard times. I hope this message finds you well, and that you will be guided by the highest wisdom in your confrontation of this crisis.

           Sincerely,

            Andrew Meyer